[dpcx]

I don't understand "Plex is no longer going to offer remote playback for personal media as a free service"

What cost does Plex incur when I watch something from my friends server? They're not footing the bill for bandwidth that I can tell, so why is there going to be a cost associated with this beyond "we can"?

[richardlblair]

The special thing about plex for me is it is effortless. I run the server, and without any port forwarding it just works. Then my in-laws can sign up, and just like that they can stream that movie I totally own legitimately... And I don't need to walk them through entering my IP, a port number. They just sign up and it works.

All of that has a cost. It costs money to maintain, it costs money to develop, it costs money to host.

It's a commercial product. They have been inching more towards monetizing their product for a long time. Being able to pay for a lifetime is a huge win imo. I wish more companies offered that.

[c0wb0yc0d3r]

> without any port forwarding it just works.

Before folks get the wrong idea, this isn’t true. Plex uses universal plug and play to open ports in your firewall, unless you explicitly configure plex manually. At that point you still have an open port but you get to pick it.

That being said, the remote access functionality plex provides is very nice. The shocking bit but to me is that they are pricing remote play at 20$/yr. As far as I can tell you only use plex infrastructure when a direct connection can’t be made. I’m my experience that’s seldom.

[sithadmin]

Plex does operate a few services that 'free' (or any) streaming may rely on depending on circumstances. Aside from auth, Plex clients that aren't able to discover the server instance locally rely on a Plex-hosted webservice to enumerate available servers. Additionally, there is a client-side config option that allows low resolution streams (720p is the ceiling, I believe) to be proxied via Plex's infrastructure. This setting is referred to as 'indirect connection', if I recall correctly.

[magicalhippo]

They also provide the HTTPS certificate allowing for secure communication, along with the DNS infrastructure for that.

That is, your host gets a DNS entry along the lines of 1.2.3.4.something.plex.com, where 1.2.3.4 is your Plex server's public IP, and they have a deal with a cert issuer so they can get valid certs for that hostname.

edit: It's Let's Encrypt these days[1], was sure it wasn't that when it started, but it's been a while.

[1]: https://support.plex.tv/articles/206225077-how-to-use-secure...

[hbn]

Whatever it is, it's too much. I remember experiencing my first "Plex outage" and wondering why Plex is architected in a way that a failure on their end can stop me from streaming local media on my own PC to the same PC hosting the files, and store my watch history/metadata in a local database on my own PC.

That almost made me switch to Jellyfin, but every time I look into Jellyfin I hear people saying it's not quite fully cooked, but that's been years now they've been saying that. So I stick with the devil I know.

[sliken]

One of the reasons I ditched plex was that it didn't allow local playback without a network connection.

Jellyfin+roku works great for me.

[jjice]

Without any other experience with this feature of Plex, I would've assumed that they'd proxy the data so it would work seamlessly with NAT and CGNAT setups without additional user config, but I have no idea if that's actually the case.

[vel0city]

They're not really proxying it, but they do assist with NAT hole-punching and you're probably using their authentication system for managing permissions.

[Tostino]

That this is absolutely a "because we can" situation. If it is using any significant resources of their own to serve it remotely, that's because they engineered it that way.

[ripharamberip]

Uh, how about they want to make money? And they have to consistently pay their developers and other bills? Is this a serious question?

[prepend]

Plex is a fork of xbmc/kodi. Did they pay those developers?

We all have bills to pay. Upping prices because I want more money isn’t a very understandable reason.

It’s not like we have any visibility into Plex’s costs. So it’s just as likely that the owner wants more profit than they have costs.

[carlosjobim]

All pirate TV businesses first and foremost work for their own profit. There's little reason to expect anything different for Plex.

[polski-g]

Well the product was fine 10 years ago. They could have stopped development and called it feature complete.

[joshstrange]

Completely untrue.

Things that were added in the last 10 years off the top of my head:

* 10 years of updates to the iOS/Android/GoogleTV/AppleTV/Mac/Windows/etc clients (that doesn't come for free)

* OpenSubtitle search built in

* Intro detection

* Credit detection

* Watch Together

* LiveTV/DVR support

* PlexAmp

* PlexDash

And more that I'm not thinking of.

You can say "I don't care about those features", which is a tired take IMHO, but there are plenty of features they have added to keep up with the online streaming platforms.

[JadeNB]

> What cost does Plex incur when I watch something from my friends server? They're not footing the bill for bandwidth that I can tell, so why is there going to be a cost associated with this beyond "we can"?

Agreed. The article says:

> Plex says that it needs to raise prices to keep up with rising costs, and that the added funds will ensure that Plex is able to keep developing new features.

and yet they also offer a lifetime pass. If I were considering paying a company that just did this, then I'm not sure I'd have much faith in the lifetime value of that lifetime pass.

[joshstrange]

Just as a reference point. I bought Plex Pass Lifetime in 2014 (June) for $74.99. So I've already had just shy of 11 years of value for $74.99 which is an absolute steal (~$0.50/mo and it only gets better as time goes on).

"Past performance is not indicative of future results." and all of that but just wanted to provide an example.

[richardlblair]

I'm in the same boat - and if they came to me and said "If you can, an extra $20 would really go a long way", I'd probably give them another $20.

[richardlblair]

I bought my lifetime pass in 2016/2017. That's 8 years of service for like $70? Not bad imo

[Bluescreenbuddy]

Because F** you that's why.